blight

The feeling, when walking through a part of town, that this neighborhood has seen better days. The decline of a part of the city from thriving neighborhood to encroaching ghettodom. Usually, blight begins with the construction of a mall/huge shopping complex, which drains local businesses of needed revenue, causing them to fail, leading eventually to joblessness and poverty. The first signs of blight are poorly kept properties, damaged building facades and an increasing number of "for sale" signs. Blight can worsten or recover, but if aided by a poor economy, it can be the precursor to the descent of the neighborhood into ghetto status. Jobs stay scarce, get scarcer, the upper middle classes leave because the area is no longer "desirable," the lower middle classes leave to find jobs in other towns. As property values plunge, the neighborhood becomes populated by the very poor, who can't afford to live any where else. Since ethnic and class lines, just as concrete as one another, often run paralell, the neigborhood often changes color. As buildings fall into disrepair, sale signs give way to boarded up windows. In it's final state, the neighborhood is a slum, a ghetto, plagued with crime, disease and, above all, crushing, inescapeable poverty. This of course is just the worst case scenario.